Baseball After the Boss

Editors' Note: On July 13, 2010, nearly three years after this story was first published, George Steinbrenner III died of a heart attack. Since this story ran, the question of who will run the New York Yankees has become clearer with his two sons now sharing ownership responsibility.

The gates have finally opened.

For more than a month, I have been trying to get an audience with George Steinbrenner III, the principal owner of the New York Yankees. His son-in-law and designated heir, the infelicitously named Steve Swindal, was arrested on the night of Valentineâ€™s Day for allegedly driving under the influence and is now divorcing his way out of the team hierarchy. I want to ask Steinbrenner who will succeed him at the helm of the most famous franchise in American sports.

But the once bold and blustery Boss, as he often calls himself, has been in nearly silent retreat since fainting at a friendâ€™s memorial service in 2003. He has been slowed by a bum knee, and his nearly uncontainable energy has ebbed noticeably, some say alarmingly. At 77, he attends his clubâ€™s games less and less frequently. He hasnâ€™t been sighted at Yankee Stadium since opening day, April 2, and on that occasion he looked unsteady and hid from public view. The Bronx Bloviator, who used to love sparring with sportswriters as much as bullying employees, now speaks to the media in canned statements issued through his designated mouthpiece, the New York P.R. guru Howard Rubenstein. Steinbrennerâ€™s Howard Hughes-like reclusiveness has fueled rumors that he is, at best, recovering from a mild stroke, at worst, in the early stages of Alzheimerâ€™s.

I seek out Tom McEwen, the onetime sports editor of the Tampa Tribune. He and Steinbrenner have been golfing buddies since 1973, the year the Boss bought the Yankees and moved his family from Cleveland to Tampa, Florida. But they havenâ€™t talked to or seen each other in more than a year. â€œIâ€™ve heard all the speculation,â€ McEwen says. â€œI hope heâ€™s okay.â€

The 84-year-old McEwen doesnâ€™t get around much anymore himself. Circulation problems in both legs have confined him to a wheelchair. Still, he offers to accompany me to Steinbrennerâ€™s home, which borders the Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club in downtown Tampa. â€œI donâ€™t care if George gets mad,â€ he says. â€œAt this age, what can he do to me?â€ So on a bright, cloudless day in June, we pull up to the Steinbrenner compound, a stucco palace with thick white columns.

As my rental car idles near the entrance, the black wrought-iron gates part and another car drives out. McEwen says, â€œLetâ€™s go in.â€ We do. A portly gardener in a Yankees T-shirt leans against a huge white anchor that dominates the front lawn. McEwen asks him, â€œIs George home?â€

The gardener nods. â€œTell him Tom is here to see him,â€ McEwen says. The gardener disappears into the house. We park in the circular driveway, and I help McEwen out of the car and into his wheelchair. Then I push him to the front porch. We stare into a dark alcove and wait.

Five minutes later, a solitary figure emerges out of the shadows, limping toward us. Itâ€™s 2 in the afternoon, and George Steinbrenner is wearing slippers, silk pajamas, and a terry-cloth robeâ€”all Yankee blue. A diamond-encrusted World Series ring nearly as big as a Ritz cracker obscures his wedding ring.

When he sees McEwen, a big, goofy grin spreads across his face. â€œGreat to see ya, Tommy,â€ he exclaims.

â€œGreat to see you, George,â€ McEwen says. He introduces me as a writer working on a story and asks about Steinbrennerâ€™s wife, Joan.

â€œGreat to see ya, Tommy,â€ Steinbrenner says.

McEwen asks about his sons, Hank and Hal.

â€œGreat to see ya, Tommy,â€ he says.

McEwen asks about his daughters, Jennifer and Jessica.

â€œGreat to see ya, Tommy,â€ he says.

McEwen asks about his health.

Steinbrenner sighs heavily and mutters, â€œOh, Iâ€™m all right.â€

He doesnâ€™t look all right. In fact, he looks dreadful. His body is bloated; his jawline has slackened into a triple chin; his skin looks as if a dry-cleaner bag has been stretched over it. Steinbrennerâ€™s face, pale and swollen, has a curiously undefined look. His features seem frozen in a permanent rictus of careworn disbelief.

McEwen recounts a surreal showdown at a Tampa dogtrack in which George and Joan cursed each other out in the most obscene language possible. â€œThatâ€™s Joan,â€ Steinbrenner says, chuckling. â€œSheâ€™s feisty.â€

I ask Steinbrenner about the Yankees, who are struggling mightily at the time. The grin turns into a snarl. â€œTheyâ€™ll come around,â€ he snaps. Itâ€™s the first sign of the old George.

I ask Steinbrenner whom he wants to succeed him. He ignores me. Thatâ€™s the last sign of the old George.

A few minutes later, Steinbrenner starts repeating himself again. â€œGreat to see ya, Tommy,â€ he says in response to every question. â€œGreat to see ya.â€

Shifting uneasily in his wheelchair, McEwen thanks his old friend for receiving us and says goodbye. Steinbrenner waves and grins. While I wheel McEwen to the car, he whispers, â€œItâ€™s the strangest thing. George didnâ€™t want us to go, yet he didnâ€™t want us to stay.â€ I look back at the Yankees owner, who is still waving and grinning. â€œGreat to see ya, Tommy,â€ he shouts. â€œGreat to see ya.â€ Then he turns and limps back into the house.

â€œIâ€™m shocked,â€ McEwen tells me. â€œGeorge doesnâ€™t even seem like the same person. I figured he might be in a bad way, but I never expected this.â€

Yankee Ingenuity

For 34 years, George Steinbrenner has run the New York Yankees the way General Douglas MacArthur ran Japan: somewhat more imperiously than the emperor. By investing all profits in new players and paying them more than any other owner was willing to, he made a dormant team a winner again. Under Steinbrennerâ€™s stewardship, the franchise has not only won 15 division titles, 10 pennants, and six world championships but has turned into the biggest attraction in sports. The Yankeesâ€™ annual revenue exceeds the average teamâ€™s by $132 million. Sports economist Andrew Zimbalist estimates the Yankeesâ€™ total value to Major League Baseball at $500 million to $700 million, which is between $50 million and $100 million more than the No. 2 team, the Boston Red Sox.

Wherever the Yankees play, their games are almost guaranteed sellouts. When they donâ€™t make the World Series, ratings plummet. When Steinbrenner has lambasted a player, his rants have become back-page headlines. For four decades, the Yanks have been a three-ring circus, and he has been their clown, their ringmaster, their Barnum. â€œThere is no such thing as apathy when it comes to the Yankees,â€ says Bill Giles, chairman of the Philadelphia Phillies. â€œHe has made his team into something you either love or hate.â€

The same can be said of Steinbrenner himself. His force of personality is such that heâ€™s admired even by some who have reason to despise him. â€œLes Yankees, câ€™est moiâ€ is Steinbrennerâ€™s attitude. Surely no modern owner is more meddlesomeâ€”he has been involved in almost every facet of the team, from negotiating major player deals to running the parking concession for a dayâ€”and surely none is more powerful. â€œBaseball rewrote its collective bargaining agreement in 2002 for the purpose of getting its hands on some of his money,â€ observed Sports Illustrated baseball writer Tom Verducci, â€œboth to chip away at his power and to prop up the weaker clubs.â€

The value of the club Steinbrenner bought 34 years ago from CBS for $10 millionâ€”his initial equity contribution was $168,000â€”has increased to an estimated $1.2 billion, the highest in baseball. The $302 million that the Yankees grossed last season came largely from ticket sales: A team attendance record of 4.2 million fans generated gate receipts of $155 million. Of the $103 million the Yankees pocketed from broadcasting rights, more than half came from the YES network, a regional cable station in which the team has a 35 percent share. The combination of YES money and lucrative marketing deals accounts for how the Yanks lost more than $25 million yet accrued $170 million in value last year. Investment bank Goldman Sachs, which owns a minority stake in YES, has been exploring a possible sale of the networkâ€”analysts say it could be worth at least $2 billion. â€œGoldman is merely testing the market,â€ Rubenstein says. â€œThey do not represent us. The Yankees have no interest in selling their share in YES.â€

The new $1 billion ballpark set to open in 2009 will make a team thatâ€™s already the most bankable in sports even more attractive, boosting annual revenue by another $50 million to $60 million from the sale of tickets and luxury suites.

The Yankees will cover 80 percent of the construction and receive a $44 million tax break. Most of their financing comes from a 40-year bond to be paid off in yearly increments of $55 million. If the Yankees donâ€™t field a good team, theyâ€™ll be saddled with some very handsome fixed costs. There will be more pressure than ever on the owner to produce a competitive champion, which is why, in the winter of the patriarch, the person who draws up the flight plan for the Bronx Bombers matters.

Despite his reputation, it has been years since Steinbrenner micromanaged the Yankees. Team president Randy Levine and chief operating officer Lonn Trost have autonomy over business decisions, as does Brian Cashman, the general manager, on the baseball end. â€œGeorge still calls the shots,â€ says a prominent baseball agent, â€œbut his passion for the game seems to have faded along with his health, and no one is quite sure whoâ€™s got his ear anymore.â€ Steinbrenner, he notes, loves aphorisms, and one of his favorites is â€œThe speed of the pack is determined by the pace of the leader.â€ â€œIn the past few years, Georgeâ€™s pace has slowed considerably. Heâ€™s been so detached this season that I wonder if heâ€™s still in the hunt.â€

The owner who once crowed â€œI will never have a heart attackâ€”I give themâ€ has said that the only way heâ€™ll leave the job is horizontally. â€œGeorge used to talk about turning over the operation to his kids,â€ McEwen says, â€œbut I think heâ€™s gonna run the Yankees until the day he dies.â€

Though Steinbrennerâ€™s four children are now middle-aged, he said three years ago that he had never spoken to any of them about the line of succession. In this late inning, with George unwilling to relinquish control, itâ€™s doubtful that Hank, Hal, or either of their two sisters will take charge while their father is still in the picture. Hank has long been Georgeâ€™s pick, but in the past, heâ€™s shown little interest in the job. Hankâ€™s indifference has left the door open for Hal, who clearly wants to be the new Boss.

Regardless of which Steinbrenner leads the Yankees next, the organization is so well managed, the transition will probably be orderly. â€œThis is not Castro dying in Cuba,â€ Zimbalist says.

Steinbrennerâ€™s children could band together as a single voting bloc, but Major League Baseball requires that each team pick one managing partner to represent it at league meetings. Over the past three years, Levine has largely performed in that capacity for the Yankees.

Whoever inherits the biggest capital gain in sports history will probably face staggering gift or estate taxes. That could be avoided, temporarily, if Steinbrenner bequeathed his stake in the team, which is now at least 55 percent, to his wife, who owns at least 5 percent herself. But Joan has always kept a low profile, and McEwen is sure she would insist on keeping it that way. (There are at least a dozen other minority partners, but itâ€™s unlikely they would play any significant role in the succession. As a previous shareholder once put it, â€œNothing is more limited than being George Steinbrennerâ€™s limited partner.â€)

Some Yankees insiders believe that once the Boss is gone, his family will sell its stake to an outsider. Donald Trump has expressed interest, and assuming Rudy Giuliani doesnâ€™t land in the White House, the former mayor would be a likely candidate to front a consortium of buyers. But Trump is thought to have too much debt and not enough ready cash. And any billionaire who could afford the Yankees wouldnâ€™t appoint someone else to run themâ€”that would be the equivalent of producing a Broadway show and not sitting front-row center on opening night. At a cost of more than a billion dollars, everyone agrees, this would not be about making money. It would strictly be an ego buy.

If the team is sold, the next Big Ego probably would be someone like Cablevision chief executive James Dolanâ€”overlord of the New York Knicks, the New York Rangers, and Madison Square Gardenâ€”assuming he has no financial ties to the Cleveland Indians, which are owned by his brother Larry. (Dolan would not

comment for this story.) Or it could be a relatively unknown hedge fund manager with a forest of performance fees to burn. Not that the thickest bankroll guarantees success. The nine members of Major League Baseballâ€™s ownership committee have absolute say over whom theyâ€™ll admit to their club, and they tend to be more arbitrary than a Manhattan co-op board. â€œThe committee polices potential investors to protect the gameâ€™s profitability and reputation,â€ a former high-ranking baseball executive says. The owners donâ€™t want a free-spending financier who would try to better a losing team by upping its $200 million payroll to $400 million. In other words, the owners donâ€™t want another George Steinbrenner.

A new, more frugal owner could roll back salaries and try to increase profits. That would be foolish, says Zimbalist: â€œThe Yankees play on the worldâ€™s biggest stageâ€”on Broadwayâ€”and they need marquee players. They canâ€™t afford to lose their sex appeal.â€ By making the payroll cheaper, an owner would risk devaluing the brand.

Still, we will probably never see another baseball owner with his audacity, chutzpah, and dominant stature. â€œSteinbrennerâ€™s economic legacy is the way he illuminated the synergy between baseball and big cities,â€ Zimbalist says. â€œHe took advantage of the fact that his team was in the countryâ€™s largest media market and the entertainment capital of the world.â€

Less a visionary than a canny capitalist, Steinbrenner changed the way baseball owners behaved by refusing to play ball by their rules. As a result, he dramatically increased player salaries around the league, and the other owners hated him for it. In 2002, they tempered his extravaganceâ€”and got a piece of his moneyâ€”by instituting the luxury tax, the proceeds of which form a pool that is shared by all the teams. Last year, other team owners split $105 million in luxury tax and revenue sharing from the Yankees. For most clubs, that $3 million in trickle-down Yankee bucks would cover the cost of a new starting pitcher. For the Yankees, it might fetch a backup catcher and a half-dozen Yankee franks.

Whoâ€™s the Boss?

â€œThe Yankees are Americaâ€™s team,â€ Hank Steinbrenner once told me. â€œTo put it bluntly, nobody outside of Missouri gives a crap if the St. Louis Cardinals or the Kansas City Royals are in the World Series."

This East 161st Street view of the world is an acquired snobbery. George and his brood grew up Cleveland Indians fans in Bay Village, Ohio, a lakeside suburb that looks as if it were inspired by a New England greeting card. His own father, Henry George Steinbrenner, was a stern and unyielding shipbuilder who had been a modestly famous scholar-athlete at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1927, he became the Engineersâ€™ first national collegiate track-and-field champion, winning the 220-yard low hurdles.

George was the oldest of three children, and the only son. Raised on a gentleÂ­manâ€™s farm, the 14-year-old followed in his fatherâ€™s goose steps to the Culver Military Academy in Indiana, where he, too, excelled at the hurdles. He tried hard to impress his old man but rarely did. During one meet, young George won three races, only to be chewed out by Big Hank for losing a fourth. Big Hank, George has said, â€œalways focused on the failures.â€

George went to Williams College and was a graduate student at Ohio State and an assistant football coach at Northwestern and Purdue. He returned to Cleveland in 1957 to join his familyâ€™s shipping company, Kinsman Marine Transit. Six years later, he bought out his father and reversed the companyâ€™s faltering fortunes by switching its principal cargo from ore to grain. In 1967, Kinsman Marine merged with a bigger local rival, American Ship Building, and became the dominant grain carrier on the Great Lakes. Still, Big Hank remained unimpressed. When his son later bought the Yankees, he muttered, â€œWell, the kid finally did something right.â€

Which may or may not have been meant as a commentary on Georgeâ€™s 1956 marriage to Joan Zieg, the daughter of an Ohio real estate tycoon. Joan (who pronounces her name JoAnn) and George had met at Ohio State while she was a dental-hygiene student and he was working on his masterâ€™s in phys ed. They had two children, Hank and Jennifer, but Joan soon found her union to George to be as blissful as a root canal: In July 1962, she filed for divorce. Two months later, the couple reconciled.

As a parent, George tried to be democratic: He browbeat his kids equally. Papa George demanded that his children best their peers at walking, reading, even toilet training. He enrolled all his children at Culver, his alma mater. â€œBeing one of Georgeâ€™s kids was not easy,â€ McEwen says. â€œHe rode the boys hard. And he rode Hank hardest of all.â€

Hank, 50, was the first and only Steinbrenner to be publicly groomed to follow in his fatherâ€™s footsteps. He stumbled along the way. Though George was Culverâ€™s Man of the Year in 1971, Hank wasnâ€™t exactly a model cadet. He hated the place. He was constantly getting demeritsâ€”for sleeping late, for not shaving, for not cleaning up his room. He would sneak out after taps and climb down the fire escape to rendezvous with his girlfriend. Hank had his serious side too. â€œWhile the rest of us guys were out hustling chicks,â€ says a former classmate, â€œHank was spending hours studying horsesâ€™ bloodlines and ballplayersâ€™ batting averages.â€

Eventually, Hank came to think Culver was the â€œgreatest experienceâ€ of his life. It wasnâ€™t always so. â€œHank resented everything the school stood for,â€ says the classmate. â€œHe was very rebellious, always going tooth-and-nail with the superintendent. It always seemed to me that he acted that way to defy his father. Hank loved George and hated him too. His biggest problem was living up to his fatherâ€™s expectations.â€ After graduation, Hank had an argument with George and took off for a couple weeks. Hank turned up at an Ocala motel. â€œWhen Hank reappeared,â€ says the classmate, â€œGeorge softened a lot on him.â€

Hank didnâ€™t go on to Williams. Instead, he made a couple of academic pit stops before settling at tiny Central Methodist in Fayette, Missouri.

â€œI wasnâ€™t more than an average student,â€ Hank once told me. George thought a degree was important; Hank didnâ€™t. He dropped out before his senior year and found work at Kinsman Farm, the familyâ€™s 750-acre Thoroughbred stud farm in Ocala, Florida.

His great passion was researching horsesâ€™ bloodlines and matching stallions with Kinsmanâ€™s breeding mares. In 1985, the first crop of foals he bred himself raced as three-year-olds. Hankâ€™s track record has been fairly impressive: five Kentucky Derby entrants, though one of them, Bellamy Road, was a big disappointment; the colt started the race as a 5-to-2 favorite but finished seventh.

In 1986, Hank served a limited apprenticeship with the Yankees. Though he had no title and drew no salary, he traveled with the team, sat in on staff meetings, and manned the phone on conference calls with the clubâ€™s top brass. Hankâ€™s ideas sometimes met with resistance. When he declared that relief pitcher Dave Righetti would be more effective as a starter and should be replaced by Alfonso Pulido, a career minor leaguer, Righetti grumbled, â€œI donâ€™t mind when people I know and whose opinions I respect make suggestions that affect me and my future. But I donâ€™t want to hear it from someone who doesnâ€™t know what heâ€™s talking about.â€ Righetti finished the season with 46 saves, still the American League record for left-handers. Pulido returned to the minors and was out of baseball entirely by the end of the following season.

Hank also took a lot of high, hard ones from sportswriters. A New York tabloid columnist threw the first knockdown pitch, chastising the 29-year-old for smoking a cigarette on the field at the Yankeesâ€™ spring training camp in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. When the Yanks released veteran pitcher Phil Niekro before the â€™86 season to avoid having to pay a bonus, Hankâ€™s sarcastic reaction to the sympathetic reportage didnâ€™t charm anyone: â€œGee, those Niekro stories really broke my heart.â€ In the press box, he was called Boy George and Damien, after the demon child in The Omen.

Like most things Steinbrenner, the nicknames were overblown. Friends of Hank say he is generally mild and terribly shy. In New York, he recoiled from the spotlight and was overshadowed by his dadâ€™s despotism. Back in 1986, I was profiling Hank for Sports Illustrated. When George found out, he threatened to revoke the magazineâ€™s Yankee Stadium press credentials indefinitely. The story never ran. Hank later apologized. â€œIâ€™m sorry we have to play hardball,â€ he told me.

Before the end of the 1986 season, he returned to the stud farm. He stayed there until 1990, when his father was banned from baseball for the second time, for paying a gambler $40,000 to dig up dirt on star player Dave Winfield, who had sued the Yankees for breach of contract. (The first suspension, in 1974, was for making illegal contributions to Richard Nixonâ€™s 1972 campaign fund.) Steinbrenner pÃ¨re nominated Steinbrenner fils to succeed him as the Yankeesâ€™ general partner. Hank refused the job. â€œIt was pretty obvious to me and everyone else that this wasnâ€™t Hankâ€™s thing,â€ said Charlotte Witkind, then one of the teamâ€™s 18 limited partners.

One of Hankâ€™s â€œthingsâ€ is drag racing, and he may have come to regret bringing his father into the sport. In 2000, he persuaded George to sponsor a team in the National Hot Rod Association and pledge $10 million over three years. True to form, George constantly pulled rank on Hank and overrode his decisions. And truer to form, Dad wanted to fire the crew chief a few days before the 2001 U.S. Nationals. Eventually, Hank persuaded him not to. â€œHank is an intelligent guyâ€”unfortunately, his father is George Steinbrenner,â€ says drag-racing legend Darrell Gwynn, the racing teamâ€™s co-owner. â€œI hate to say this, but as long as George is alive, Hank will never blossom as a businessman.â€

During the 2001 racing season, Gwynn was summoned to Legends Field, the Yankeesâ€™ spring-training base in Tampa, to meet with George and Hank. George announced he was ending his commitment. â€œWe went from $10 million to $3.3 million,â€ Gwynn says. â€œMy screamathon with George lasted four hours, during which I mostly just listened. Then he apologized and said I could have anything I wanted in the Legends Field gift shop.â€ Hank didnâ€™t say much of anything. Thirty minutes into the discussion, Gwynn says, he disappeared.

A year ago, worn down by a wrenching divorce, Hank vanished from the family businesses as well. He resurfaced last winter when his brother-in-law Steve Swindal fell from favor. â€œIâ€™m sure Hank felt George needed him to get on board with the team again,â€ McÂ­Ewen says. â€œEither that or George just insisted on it.â€

This season, Hank has been a fixture at the Yankees team offices in Tampa. George has made a point of trumpeting his sonâ€™s renewed involvement with the franchise. In May, when Roger Clemens came out of retirement to re-sign with the Yankees, George issued a press release praising the part Hank and brother Hal played in the deal. â€œThe funny thing is that their sister Jenny may be savvier in business,â€ McEwen says. â€œYet her name never comes up.â€

The 48-year-old Jennifer briefly worked in the Yankees public relations department after graduating with honorsâ€”she was a Morehead scholarâ€”as a business major at the University of North Carolina. â€œEven if I wanted to move up in the organization, I wouldâ€™ve never been allowed,â€ Jennifer, a mother of two, told the New York Times in 2004, â€œnot in this family.â€ George is such an entrenched chauvinist that in 1995, when trawling for a new general partner, he bypassed Jennifer for her husband, Swindal, a former tugboat-company executive.

Swindalâ€™s responsibilities ran from acting as a buffer between his father-in-law and general manager Cashman to monitoring the progress of the new stadium. His biggest accomplishment was the amicable way he negotiated manager Joe Torreâ€™s three-year, $19.2 million contract extension in 2004â€”in stark contrast to the acrimony of â€™01. Two years ago, Steinbrenner rewarded Swindal by anointing him Boss-to-be. Swindal still has a hand in running Yankees Inc., but few insiders thought that he was ever anything but a pretender to the throne. Swindal is not blood, and George is very big on blood.

That would also seem to rule out Joseph Molloy, the first husband of Jessica Steinbrenner. When George needed a new managing general partner during his second suspension in 1992, he named Molloy, who quickly rose from junior-high-school basketball coach to vice president in charge of the companyâ€™s Tampa operations. He is now an assistant middle school principal in Tampa.

A childrenâ€™s book writer with four kids, Jessica, 43, has a sociology degree from Sweet Briar College, a solid reputation for co-managing Kinsman Farm with Hank, and, according to McEwen, â€œabsolutely no shot at running the Yankees.â€ She and Molloy divorced in 1998, and she later married his best friend, Felix Lopez. The Cuban-born landscaper had been hired by Molloy to work on the construction of Legends Field. He was tending Jessicaâ€™s yard when they became an item. He is now a senior vice president of the Yankees, and among other duties, he helps evaluate Latin baseball talent.

The most ambitious of the Bosses-in-waiting is Hankâ€™s younger brother, Hal, who at 38 has rotated in and out of the Yankees loop for 17 years. Known to the Yankees court as Prince Hal, he followed his father to Williams, got an M.B.A. from the University of Florida, and joined the Yanks. George put him through the paces in various departments of the club. Hal, too, clashed early and often with George and bolted from the realm in 1996 to run the familyâ€™s hotel business. When he turned innkeeper, the Steinbrenners owned three properties. Today, the family has eight.

Though he bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Steinbrenner senior, Hal is keen to show he is his own man. He has become a sort of champion of the Yankeesâ€™ 200 employees. After the 2003 season, George wanted to take away their dental coverage; Hal talked his father out of it. Unlike George, Hal seems to disdain players and the media.

Since Swindalâ€™s exit, Hal has bunkered down in his office at Legends Field and has taken on many of his ex-brother-in-lawâ€™s responsibilities. The new Yankee Stadium is the hotelierâ€™s pet project. But the question of whether Prince Hal will ascend to the throne may have less to do with his competence than the madness of King George. â€œIâ€™ve always thought that Hank was the favorite of the mother, and Hal of the father,â€ McEwen says. â€œBut who knows what George is thinking now? Heâ€™s got his family in a puzzlement.â€

Long shots and dark horses aside, the smart money is on Hank, perhaps only because heâ€™s the oldest. Thatâ€™s if he even wants the job. Until now, he hasnâ€™t.

To be elevated to general partner, Hank would have to win approval from two-thirds of the Yankeesâ€™ quiescent stockholders. Barring an internecine battle, he would be a shoo-in. Approval by Major League Baseball, on the other hand, will not be automatic. In the past, numerous potential general partners, most notably Eddie DeBartolo of San Francisco 49ers football fame, have been batted down in the rigorous process of interviews and background checks. The nomination must be okayed by three-quarters of team owners. â€œBeing a Steinbrenner should simplify things,â€ says Patrick Courtney, of the baseball commissionerâ€™s office. â€œThe family is not unknown.â€

Though Hank may lack his fatherâ€™s fire and fervor, thereâ€™s no reason to believe he would be any less of a spendthrift. Five years ago, he argued at a front-office meeting for the team to trade for Raul Mondesi, a famously overpaid and underachieving outfielder. â€œThe Yankees go out and make the big deal!â€ he told general manager Cashman (as reported in Sports Illustrated). â€œItâ€™s what the Yankees do!â€ Cashman disagreed, but Mondesi became a Yankee and was a colossal bust.

Hank has not talked to reporters about baseball in a very long time, though some 20 years ago, he and I spoke for four hours about his childhood, his father, the team, and all things Yankee. He sat behind a desk in his ballpark office, empty except for a butt-filled ashtray. He wore a monogrammed white shirt, a well-pressed blue pinstriped suit, and a tie with a Yankees insignia. He had a watchful reserve, his hair combed and trimmed with plebe-like precision. The only hint of insouciance was a cigarette cocked Bogart-style in the corner of his mouth. â€œI donâ€™t want to sound conceited,â€ he said in a voice that was almost gentle, â€œbut Iâ€™m second in command in this organization.â€

â€œWhat I think Hank means,â€ his father later told me, â€œis that heâ€™s No. 2 at the dinner table.â€ Whether that was confirmation or denial is still debatable.

Though having their father buy the Yankees would be a dream for many kids, Hank initially found it distasteful. â€œThe big salaries repulsed me,â€ he told me. â€œThe fact that guys were playing a kidsâ€™ game and getting enormous amounts of money seemed illogical. They get millions a year to bitch and moan and be pampered. They ought to try putting on a suit and working behind a desk at I.B.M. for a month instead of jumping around a field.â€ Of course, many people think his father was the cause of all those high salaries, but Hank said, â€œDad didnâ€™t create the system. He just took advantage of it.â€

By 1986, Hank had changed his mind and come to think of ballplayers as entertainers who should therefore earn as much as rock stars. Until this epiphany, his only professional connection with the game had been a softball team he managed in Tampa, where labor costs werenâ€™t so high. Hank told George he would like to learn the business. â€œItâ€™s about time,â€ Dad said.

And what had he learned? â€œFour big lessons,â€ Hank told me. â€œMy father taught me youâ€™ve got to outhustle the competition. He taught me that in business, thereâ€™s always a time when you can take a risk. And he taught me that if youâ€™re not a benevolent dictator, your subjects will take advantage of you every time.â€

The final lessonâ€”the one that may be most significant if he does become the next Bossâ€”was to ignore public opinion. â€œThe temptation would be to throw up my hands and say, â€˜Fuck it!â€™ â€ Hank said. â€œWhen my dad bought the Yankees, fans were getting tired of rooting for a piece-of-crap team. Iâ€™m certainly not going to sell a club with a strong farm system to some jackass and have him get credit for winning the World Series.â€ Spoken like a true Steinbrenner.

I asked Hank how he would improve the Yankees. He flashed a smile that was broad and diabolical. â€œGet rid of my Â­father,â€ he cracked.

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